Then the lecture led to such good business that the Wandering Minstrels often stayed for three weeks in a nice pitch, which under other circumstances they would have left next day.
* * * * *
Oh, for that beautiful summer that so quickly wore away! And, oh, for the charming scenery of the south and the west of Merrie England, which they might perhaps never see again!
Shall I describe the scenery in detail which day after day they passed through as the weeks glided over their heads? If I had space, nothing on earth would please me more, my dear girl and boy readers. Some day perhaps—yes, some day! Heigho! But I must not seem to sadden you, children, even with a sigh.
The events and the incidents of the road were for ever changing. Every turn of the highway brought before them a new scene—woods draped in all the glory of sunshine, high green lights, and darkest foliage; the silence of forests, broken only by the songs of the wild-birds or the croodling of the ring-doves in the thickets of spruce; the solemn silence of moorlands—in spring-time dotted over with the white blossoming hawthorn or may, and the golden glory of furze that scented the air for miles around—in autumn, crimson and purple with heather and heath; great stretches of greenest grass-land, undulating, charming, with maybe a streamlet meandering through them, by the banks of which rustic divinities in the shape of red or speckled cows waded knee-deep in buttercups and daisies; cattle and sheep happy together on lone hill-sides; hares on the heaths, who sat up and quietly washed their faces as they gazed at or after the caravans; wild-flowers everywhere, by the river’s brink, afloat in the river itself, standing erect in their glory of crimson or pink among the bulrushes; wild-flowers on the moors, on the mountains, in the fields, by the hedgeways, and covering great patches of level sward through which the brown road went winding and winding till it climbed mountain and hill perhaps, and disappeared over its brow, or went rapidly downwards till lost in the rolling shadows of woodlands; little lakes and lonely tarns near to which they often made the mid-day halt, and rippling streams, with here a pool and there a pool, from which glad fish leapt up into the sunshine.
Sunshine? Oh, yes, sunshine, but not always. There were days of wind and rain, drizzling mountain rain that soaked the roads, that saddened the very horses; wild storms of wind or sudden squalls that at times all but overturned the great caravan. Then there were the thunder-storms that so delighted Peggy, for the louder heaven’s artillery, the heavier the spate, and the more vivid the lightning, the better pleased were Peggy and little Willie.
On rainy days even with the wind ahead, little concerts would be held in the wee caravan, as the horse jogged slowly on. On days like these they tried to get earlier into camp, and after the tent was erected and the horses seen to, an excellent dinner made all hands forget the weariness of the long, long way they had traversed.
I pause here—give one more sigh for the summer that passed so soon away.
* * * * *
One autumn evening they encamped in a field not far from a sweet little village, or rather hamlet, of scattered, old-fashioned, and very Saxon houses. The children were as Saxon as the village, fair-headed, rosy-lipped, bare-headed innocents, with eyes of “himmel blue”; beautiful enough were they to dream of.